Fall's Explosion in my Living Room

As you have heard, I love decorating my house, especially for fall and Christmas.  The rest of the year it is pretty much just "normal stuff" - like candles and pictures and vases.  But when the holidays come around, they kind of explode throughout our main living area.

Because our current house does not have a fireplace *which in my opinion is just wrong* I also do not have a mantel to decorate {wah, wah....}.  My bookcase has had to stand in for my main focal point in our living room.

My favorite features here include the burlap-wrapped candle and flower vase *which are both new additions to my collection of fall decor that I created just last week*, as well as the warm inviting colors.  You will also see that I have printed out a copy of my Fall Bucket List and framed it on the top shelf.

We also have a banister-type ledge that sits above the stairway leading from the ground floor to the main level of our house.  This has come in useful as well in making up for the lack of mantel.

The empty third jar is now full of candy corn - but I was too lazy to re-take the picture.  If you missed it last week, you can see more about my pumpkins here.

Keeping with the Fall theme - Congratulations to Meghan from They Call Her Meghan for winning the Fall Adspace Giveaway!  Meghan will be receiving ad space from some of the great blogs that you will find on my sidebar this month!

One of those blogs where you will find >>> is Simple Moments Stick.  I absolutely LOVE Susannah's post from earlier this week about 25 Fall Date Ideas!  She has some great suggestions, so make sure you go check it out!

You can also follow Simple Moments Stick via

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My Week in Pinterest

In the last week, I have taken full advantage of Pinterest and the ideas it presents.

I made this pumpkin dip to bring to a friend's housewarming party :

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I also tried some Laughing Cow cheese on my cucumber. It had a little bit of an interesting flavor, but it wasn't bad. And it's healthier than putting it on crackers...

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But this is by far my greatest accomplishment this week, thanks to Pinterest. This is the inspiration for my most recent fall project:

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And this is how mine turned out:

I'm a little bit obsessed with burlap recently - so it will be making some more appearances soon when I share some of my other fall decorations.  That will probably be sometime early next week.  Each time I started painting a layer of white paint on the middle pumpkin, Tristan would ask me why I didn't just buy a white pumpkin.  Clearly he doesn't understand the idea of "crafting".  He did end up helping me apply the vinyl "M", though, and with cutting off the pumpkin stems so that they could be stacked - so I guess I will keep him around...

And . . . in classic Friday fashion, I am linking up with Whitney for #backthatazzup Friday.  This week, I am getting ready for next week's premier of Nashville (Sept. 25th)!

P.S. If you are a Nashville fan as well, I heard that one of our fellow bloggers is an extra on the show~as is her hubby!  How cool is that?!  Be sure to watch for Chelsey from Patti Cake!